Dog Sees God, a memory
by Jiirosensei
Summary: A story based on the play "Dog Sees God", based on the Peanuts comic. From Beethoven; Schroeder's point of view about the abuse he received at the hands of his father.


His breath was sour with whiskey and he pressed his mouth too hard on mine. I started counting the tiles on the shower wall that I could see from my seat on the bed. Some days it was 36, sometimes it was closer to 40. My breath was shallow in my chest as his heavy hand moved up my thigh to the band of my underwear, hot and rough on my skin. I swallowed time and time again, but it didn't help.

My tongue was too thick and threatened to choke me.

My body tensed more as that hot, metal hand groped below the elastic band of my shorts and its counterpart pushed me backwards onto the down comforter; the comforter smelling of lilacs and my mother's bath salts.

If I closed my eyes, maybe I could imagine this wasn't what it was, but I couldn't close my eyes. If I did that, his feelings would get hurt, and if his feelings got hurt, sometimes he'd hurt me.

He'd squeeze my arm a little too tight, or jerk my hair back a little too hard, or let those hands search a little too roughly while demanding to know why I didn't love him, why I didn't respect him. If instead, I kept my eyes open and counted the little hand carved roses on great grandmother's pendulum clock, then he would finish faster and he would stop touching me and it would end.

Every time after, I'd sit at my piano, as still and straight as a post to keep the hard, wooden bench from reminding me how sore I was and the music would wash me cleaner than any amount of water could.

Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Chopin; pounding out etudes, fugues, sonatas, hard enough to force the polluted memories from my mind and the polluted touch from my body.

He never told me to play quietly, no matter how loud I hammered the keys, no matter how forcefully I stomped the pedals. He never scolded, never mentioned, never showed any signs that he noticed, and I let the piano scream for me and pour out the sorrow of my broken heart.

But _this_ was not every time. This time, my mother had gotten into a disagreement with the ladies book club over whether or not Charlotte Bronte had meant Jane Eyre to be a symbol of feminism in an otherwise patriarchal society, and had departed before the lemon scones had even finished baking.

She had returned home. She had returned home… She had returned home to change the world, to serve fate and find me in this most shameful position. Vulnerable, exposed, ashamed. I will never forget the creak of the bed as he leaped to his feet. I will never forget the epic feeling of smallness, alone in a lilac sea, vulnerable and exposed, my mother's face drawn and sick and aged forty years.

To this day, if I lay atop the covers, I can still see that face, I can still hear his voice, garbled and soundless in its sound, like the echo of a thought, masked by the oceans of blood pounding in my ears. I can remember the day the world stopped.

She had said nothing to him, and only "Put on your pants," to me, in a voice so cold, I was sure the little pendulum in the clock would stop, and the wooden roses ice over with a sheen of killing frost.

The back seat of the car - my memory jumps - the corduroy seat of the old, maroon Buick seemed infinitely big and I felt infinitely small, pushed into the corner, my arms folded tightly across my chest, hands gripping arms for dear life. The whole world was slipping away, and so might I.

At grandmother's house, it was so quiet that the silence was loud. A tense buzzing seemed to fill the empty air to capacity. They all sat there and murmured to themselves. My mother wept, grandmother held her. My uncle comforted her… and nobody touched me. Nobody. Touched. Me. I didn't want to touch me, but I was too stuck in my skin.

I felt sick; they all knew, and what they didn't know, they speculated, whispering bits of "Did he…?"s and "Do you think?"

It was a month before we went home… and then the cops came, silent, like sharks circling the neighborhood, their lights flashing my shame on the sidewalks and white fences.

He didn't look at me as he left, but he wept, and so did my mother. I didn't cry. I couldn't cry. I was too humiliated. My jaw was locked and refused to tremble.

They were all there, all of my friends, staring, wide-eyed, wondering. What would their parents tell them? What would _my_ parents tell me? How could something this horrible be explained?

They did their best. They eluded to the situation, sugar coating and downplaying as much as they could while the school set up counseling and classes to teach us to protect ourselves from predators. Too late.


End file.
